


Blame

by sunryder



Category: Eureka
Genre: M/M, Sex Pollen, Trope Bingo Round 3, post Purple Haze, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 18:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1277083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunryder/pseuds/sunryder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking back, Jack wanted to blame Fargo for the whole thing. But really, it was all Henry’s fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blame

Looking back, Jack wanted to blame Fargo for the whole thing. But really, it was all Henry’s fault.

 

Fargo was the one who’d dragged Jack out of the house mid-football game to complain about Seth, and Seth was the one to breed the damn psychedelic plants in the first place, but it was Henry’s new satellite tower that had glitched and shorted out Jack’s cable. Which meant that by the time Jack got back to the bunker, he couldn’t even get static, let alone the game.

 

And that’s where things went wrong.

 

Jack headed to _Café Diem_ for a replacement steak that would come without a side order of SARAH’s lecture on his cholesterol. And then, well, he was just across the street from the sheriff’s office, so he figured that he might as well head in and get some paperwork done without the looming threat of Eureka-style chaos. Later, Jack would put the pieces together and figure out that he hadn’t fallen asleep at his desk, he’d passed out from Seth’s damn pollen. Though knowing that didn’t improve the problem.

 

The problem being that Jack had found himself sprawled over Nathan Stark’s chest, idly rubbing his erection against the hollow of Stark’s hip.

 

Jack absolutely did not think about how he’d known he was with Stark before even opening his eyes because he recognized the spicy, metallic scent that always clung to the man. When Jack’s common sense caught up to what his body didn’t seem to mind at all, he froze. He had had a split second where he thought things couldn’t get any worse, then remembered that this was Eureka and tried to haul the thought back into his head before the universe caught wind of it, but it was too late.

 

A girlish giggle that had rearranged Jack’s view of his deputy was all the warning he had before Jo flopped onto the hair’s breadth of space on the other side of the cot and snuggled herself up against Stark’s other side. “You guys look hot together.” She leered, and Jack regretted ever being born. He buried his face in Stark’s chest with a groan, then remembered what in the hell he was doing and tried to fling himself away. He got one hand free, which smacked into the metal wall with a clang, but the rest of him stayed firmly pressed to Stark’s chest.

 

“Is there a reason you’re interrupting my afterglow, Lupo?” Stark grumbled, the rumble of his voice echoing through Jack’s ribs and doing nothing to help his erection. He tried to shimmy his hips away without drawing attention to how he’d pretty much been humping Stark’s leg, but both Stark and Lupo snapped out a hand and caught Jack’s hip to keep him right where he was. (Yes, _hip_. Under no circumstances was Jack willing to admit that Nathan’s Stark was squeezing his ass.)

 

“If you didn’t want people to interrupt you, you shouldn’t be having sex in your office. At least when it’s unlocked. Jack said so.”

 

Yes, yes he had said so just that morning when Jo had declared that she was bored and made soma salacious comments about the length of Jack’s fingers. A memory that he had been determined to ignore for the rest of his life, no matter the fodder for blackmail it could’ve been.

 

“Usually people walk away from a room when they see people having sex in it. Or at the very least don’t climb into bed with the people. And Lupo, remove your hand from Carter before I remove it for you."

 

Jo giggled like that was hilarious, and really, it was. Despite Stark’s size and the rather impressive musculature that Jack was currently up close and personal with, Jo’s training and sheer level of scary was enough to let her beat Stark when she was drunk with one hand tied behind her back. “You’re funny, Stark.”

 

“I will replace all the firearms in Eureka with stun guns that don’t actually render anyone unconscious.” Jack wanted to protest that that would make their jobs ten thousand times more difficult, but Lupo ripped her hand away from him like she’d been burned, so he didn’t object. “Now what in the hell are you doing here?”

 

“Holy shit!” Zoe interrupted with a scream. Ah, and there was a bit more of the universe’s retribution. Because this already wasn’t going to be difficult enough to explain.

 

The door slammed closed behind Jack’s traumatized child, and Jo said, “Ooooh, right. I was supposed to tell Jack that Zoe is looking for him.”

 

“Really, Lupo?” Jack pulled out of Stark’s arms, and this time the other man let him. “You couldn’t have mentioned that before you tried to bang Stark?” He flopped over the other two, dragging the blanket with him in an effort to cling to modesty while he tried to figure out where in the hell his pants had ended up.

 

“No Jack, I was trying to bang both of you. Still am.” Jo popped up and grabbed for the blanket to pull him back to the cot. “We can lock the door and play ‘Jacky in the Middle’.”

 

Jack did a little twist that yanked the blanket down to expose far more of his ass than he was comfortable sharing, but he managed to get out of range with his dignity still intact. At least, it was intact until he looked back at Jo to shout at her and his brain finally realized that escaping with the blanket meant that he’d left Stark without. Specifically: without a blanket to cover, well, to cover anything. Which, judging by the way Stark had one knee cocked to jaunt his hips, and had his hands stretched up above his head to reveal the sleek lines of his stomach and arms, he didn’t seem to mind.

 

Some part in the back of Jack’s brain was screaming at him to look away. Look _away_ , dammit! But some other part couldn’t help but notice that Stark was… impressive. Which was not a train of thought that Jack was going to indulge at this moment.

 

Jack forced himself to whip around and direct his eyes to the exact opposite side of the room from Stark’s naked, sweaty body. Which conveniently happened to be where Jack’s pants were located. (He was not thinking about the sequence of hungry kisses and quick hands that had led to said pants being kicked over Stark’s computer. Never, _ever_ , was Jack going to admit that his first orgasm of the day had been atop Stark’s desk.)

 

Jack kept on his blanket while he shimmied his way back into pants that—thankfully—weren’t ripped or stained with anything even more incriminating. He ignored Jo’s off-rhythm attempt to croon out stripper music and instead threw open the door to find Zoe covering her ears. She didn’t seem to be doing a great job of it since her head popped up at the noise of Jack’s appearance.

 

Her hands went straight to her hips to properly shout at Jack, then her eyes flickered past him and she spun around with a shriek and buried her face in the opposite wall. Jack turned, expecting something awful lurking behind him, and it was, just… the other meaning of awful.

 

Naked Stark was a breath behind his shoulder, so turning put them chest-to-chest and Jack may or may not have stood there for longer than he should have. But really, the usually immaculate Stark had sex hair. Jack figured he could be forgiven for staring. Stark however, couldn’t be forgiven for being naked in front of Jack’s kid. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

 

He shoved the blanket at Stark’s chest, but of course, the man let it drop to the ground without a touch. “Really, Stark? Now is not the time!” Jack grabbed the blanket and tossed it around Stark’s shoulders like a toga, then shoved the man back to given himself some breathing room. It took a bit more effort than Jack wanted to admit to turn back to Zoe, but remembering that she’d come to look for him in the heart of GD was enough.

 

“Zo? What’s wrong?” Zoe peeked over her shoulder, checking that Stark wasn’t still standing there. She shoved aside her embarrassment and glowered at Stark before she turned her temper on Jack.

 

“SARAH and I figured out why everyone’s acting crazy!”

 

“Wait, I told you to stay _with_ SARAH. How did you get here?”

 

“Dad,” she reached up and grabbed his shoulders, “ _focus_! We need a flamethrower!”

 

Everything that happened next was mostly a mess of adrenaline as Zoe drove them all to Seth’s farm with a trunk full of flamethrowers that had been provided by Stark. (Jack simultaneously wished he’d driven since not driving meant he spent the journey making out a little bit with Stark in the back seat, but he could admit that he probably wouldn’t have passed the drunk test at that particular moment.) They burned down the plants, Jo picked a fight with Taggart for trying to stop them (a fight that turned into exactly what Jack had spent the afternoon doing with Stark), and Zoe dragged them all into town to keep the peace while the pollen wore off.

 

And after that things were… fine. Sure, most of the town was horribly embarrassed by their actions and more than a few people went on vacation until things had blown over. But all that awkwardness was good, because most people assumed he and Stark had just beaten the shit out of each other and felt stupid about it. Jo didn’t tell a soul because she knew Stark would spread the word about her and Taggart, and Zoe was just mortified by proof that her father was still having sex. So really, Jack didn’t need to say anything. It was a secret all four of them could carry to their graves and everything would be fine.

 

But no one had ever accused Jack Carter of taking the easy way.

 

Which was how he found himself strolling into Stark’s office, trying not to look as awkward as he felt. “What do you want, Sheriff?”

 

Jack stuck his hands in his pockets in feigned casualness and decided he couldn’t actually make this worse by speaking his mind. “Henry said the pollen stripped our inhibitions. The stuff that makes us behave like civilized people.”

 

Stark didn’t bother looking up from his computer while he sneered. “If you’re implying something about my hidden desires, Sheriff—”

 

Jack tossed his hands in the air and went for the door. He should’ve known that Stark was going to be an ass about this and not even tried. Somehow his momentum towards the door managed to twist him around in a circle and put him right back in front of the desk. “You know what, here’s the thing, Stark. I’ve spent the last week listing to my daughter and my house tell me about the deeper psychological meaning of you wanting to screw me into every flat surface in this office. I get that it wasn’t sex, it was power.

 

“I also get that when you had nothing in your brain to make you behave like the smug bastard head of GD, after, you know, the sex, you helped my daughter. Normally you hang out in the office when you’re not telling me that I’m an idiot or that people are allowed to blow up the building, or…” Jack trailed off when he saw Stark’s eyebrow get perilously high on his forehead. “Anyway. When you had all that stripped away, you helped me save the world. And, more importantly, you helped Zoe.

 

“So whatever else happened, or didn’t happen, that we’re never acknowledging might have happened by the way, you helped my kid. And I wanted to say thank you for that.” Jack let the statement hang there for a moment, not quite expecting Stark to reply, but wanting to give him the change all the same. When the man said nothing, Jack gave him a sharp nod and made for the door, finally ready to put this whole thing behind him.

 

Only, showing your back to Nathan Stark was a stupid, _stupid_ thing to do and a US Marshal should know better.

 

The only warning Jack had was the wall of windows going opaque. He had half a second to wonder, “What the—” then he was slammed against the office door and had Stark’s bulk against his. Things got a little hazy after that. Not in the drugged up way of before, but because Stark was exceptionally good with his fingers and apparently had a kink for desks.

 

And yes, Jack collected enough data to validate that hypothesis. Although, around the fifth time they explored that particular fascination of Stark’s, Henry decided the week’s emergency was terrible enough to make use of his override on Stark’s office door, and he brought half of GD with him.

 

So really, in the end, it _was_ all Henry’s fault.


End file.
